By Ari Russo

Published 4:49 pm, Tuesday, April 2, 2013

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What is it?: Graze is an invitation-only online service that allows you to sign up for weekly parcels of four healthy snack packs. Snacks offered by Graze include dried fruits, nuts, seeds, rolled oat bars called Flapjacks, crackers and miniature bread sticks with dips. You can rate all the snacks on their website (http://www.graze.com) with whether you would love, like or be willing to try them, with the option of choosing not to be sent that snack at all. Snacks can also be filtered by food allergy.

Each week, a selection of nutritionally balanced snacks will be chosen based on your preferences and delivered by mail to your work or home.

Experience: I live out of my messenger — emphasis on the mess — bag during the week. I stuff in a sandwich and a couple clementines on my way out the door in the morning, but I almost always end up ducking into a coffee shop or a grocery store with my stomach clamoring for a chai and granola bar fix by early evening.

I tried Graze after finding invitation codes online, and seeing that my first box would be free. Chocolate-covered honeycomb? Kaffir lime leaves? Inca berries? I didn't know what any of those tasted like, but by the time I'd rated my first page of snacks, I was excited to find out.

My Graze snacks came in a small, brown, craft-paper box, like a care package from a friend, about two and a half weeks after I signed up. Dried Inca berries, I shortly learned, are small, wrinkled, deep orange and have a sharp, tart taste. Chocolate-covered honeycomb? Sticky-sweet, chewy and very rich. Still hoping to experience those lime leaves.

The snack packs are small enough to be tucked inside a lunchbag, backpack or purse.

Graze boasts that all of its more than 90 snacks have a health benefit and lists nutrition information online. Symbols on their website and their snack packs note whether a particular food contains a full serving of fruit, is a good source of dietary fiber or clocks in under 100 calories. Graze offers two choices of box: The ''snackbox'' and the ''lightbox,'' which has snacks listed at between 50 and 150 calories.

Favorite snacks out of the boxes I've received are Strawberry Milkshake, with lush, whole dried strawberries, banana coins (which are thicker and softer than banana chips) and white chocolate, and Eton Mess, which includes black currants and sweet, crisp miniature meringues.

Cost:$5 per week, no commitment. First and fifth boxes are free. Graze customers who give their invitation codes to friends can get $1 off their next box.

Studies warned; we listened. Soda consumption in the U.S. dropped to a 26-year low in 2012, according to data published in the trade journal Beverage Digest.

"This is great news for the health of the population," says David Levitsky, a professor of Nutritional Sciences and Psychology at Cornell University who specializes in obesity, weight loss and how people inform their food choices. "There is considerable scientific support that consuming liquid calories in the form of soft drinks and juices between meals'' is linked to increased body weight.